Doping as technology: a rereading of the history of performance-enhancing substance use in the light of Brian Winston's interpretative model for technological continuity and change

Abstract

This article sets out to make a case for a non-moralistic and non-Manichaean approach to the doping phenomenon, where doping is seen as but one more form of technology applied for the enhancement of performance in sport. Departing from these premises, the article proposes a re-interpretation of the history of doping and anti-doping in the light of the interpretative frame proposed by the media scholar Brian Winston to analyze the processes of technological change and innovation. According to this dialectic model, the evolution of any technological novelty must be understood in the wider social framework where it develops and in particular as the result of the interplay of social accelerators (the social necessities or demands that the technology in question helps to solve) and brakes (the social forces whose status or position may be challenged by the new technologies). It is argued that the main and probably the only social force pushing forward the innovation processes in sport, including doping, derives from the inexorable tension of sport towards hierarchy, performance and victory. Among the social brakes for the development of doping one can add a part of the medical and journalistic professions, the sports governance structure and some national governments. The current state of doping practices and anti-doping policies is the result of the balance of forces in the tension between social brakes and accelerators, which accounts for all the apparent inconsistencies and whims of the current list of prohibited substances and methods.